COAL RESEARCH INTERESTS N.Z.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31290, 9 February 1967, Page 11

COAL RESEARCH INTERESTS N.Z.

Direct gasification of coal for possible production of petroleum and burners for pulverised coal to drive gas turbines were recently investigated in Australia by Dr. J. B. Stott, a senior lecturer in chemical engineering at the University of Canterbury.

Both have caused keen interest in New Zealand m potentially-valuable means of using natural resources. The Government’s inter-depart-mental mineral resources committee and the University Grants Committee, in the last year have made grants amounting to £19,000 to the University of Canterbury for research in these two fields and an Italian expert from Israel (Dr. E. Basevi) arrived last week to spend a year as a research fellow with Dr. Stott’s team.

The university will set up a small direct gasification plant for experiments this year and it recently began testing a locally-designed burner for pulverised coat Dr. Stott, who returned from Australia on Tuesday evening, said he had valuable talks on both these projects at the Cemmonweslth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s chemical laboratories at Melbourne and at its coal research laboratories in Sydney after attending the congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the advancement of science. “Traditional methods of producing gas by distillation depend heavily on sales of coke to be profitable,” Dr. Stott said. The direct method used virtually all of the coal, with little residue, and petroleum could be produced from the gas by catalytic action. There was one such full-

scale plant in South Africa and some in the United States.

“This process is causing world-wide interest because oil resources are definitely dwindling,” said Dr. Stott. "New Zealand is interested to see how New Zealand coals perform.” Germany used the method to produce ges for town use.

The main interest in pul-verised-coal burners arose from the New Zealand glut of “dross” (coal smaller then a quarter inch). Because most coals burned more brightly with the dross out, both home and industrial consumers rejected this grade. With large quantities of dross going to waste, it would be highly economic to dedevelop a burner which would use it efficiently. Dr. Stott said the chemical engineering department had developed a burner which extracted ash as a molten slag and produced gas which could run a gas turbine. This research would continue indefinitely. As with many other New Zealand enterprises, the problem was to perfect a device which would be satisfactory for relatively small installations and not depend on sheer size for economy, Dr. Stott said.

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